Monday, 9 November 2015

Julia was really not thrilled with me when I left NKL without another job to go to and I didn’t really blame her.

Fortunately for both of us, especially me, I figured out what I wanted to do instead pretty quickly and have been working at Sullivan Town Hall for almost two years now.

I really love it too. I was so bored in the corporate world but I really feel challenged now.

I’m a campaign manager, which I never would have guessed could be a full-time job before. But it is.

When there’s no election on, like now, I generally work with pollsters and lobby groups, making sure we’re in the best possible position for when there is an election.

I’m much, much happier overall now, even though I do have to work the occasional Saturday.

That makes it hard to spend time with Zac, seeing weekends are supposed to be our time together.

I like doing things with him during the day when we have him but it can’t be helped. We just make sure we go out for dinner instead.

Zac loves that anyway, so he’s happy.

He’s a little picky and rarely ventures far from the kids’ menu but he just likes doing something different.

I think he’d be quite thrilled to be able to order from a menu at home. He’s always requesting hot dogs for dinner when we’ve already started preparing spaghetti.

If I’m working, he spends the day time with Julia, often just hanging out at home.

I’ve been really pleased that Julia and Zac get along so well. It’s definitely something I worried about, giving Zac a stepmum. But it couldn’t have gone better.

She often says Zac is like a miniature version of me. He’s exactly the way she imagines I would have been as a kid.

She’s not too far off the mark. Zac definitely gets his temperament from me.

While working at NKL, I grew quite close with Zane - he was even best man at our wedding - and not seeing him and my other former co-workers as much is really the only thing I miss about my old job.

But we can still catch up in our own time, of course, so we’ve been making an effort to do that since I left. We recently had Zane and Chloe over for dinner at ours.

They’re expecting their second child in August, so things are pretty exciting for them right now.

They just moved house a few weeks ago and they’re all good to go when the baby arrives.

I don’t think either of them talked about anything else all night. They can’t wait for their son to finally be a big brother.

It didn’t bother me but apparently, it really bothered Julia. Not that she told me about right away.

I could tell something was on her mind but she wouldn’t talk about it, so I went to bed clueless.

The next morning, she admitted that it was torture for her listening to Zane and Chloe talk about their baby, when we’ve been trying since we got married and she’s not pregnant yet.

She’s fine with Hope and Mason, so I honestly would never have guessed hearing about Chloe’s pregnancy would be a problem for her.

Julia said she’s happy for Hope, because she knows the whole story about she and Malcolm losing their first baby and how long they waited for Mason. It’s still hard when she sees other women who seem to fall pregnant so easily.

It wasn’t totally fair, seeing we don’t really know how long it took for Chloe and Zane. But I also understood what she meant.

As fun as trying for a baby is, the monthly negative tests have been very discouraging for Julia.

Julia was so sure she'd get pregnant on our first try, so even though six months isn't really that long, she’s getting a little anxious about it now.

We kept trying though and finally, this week, we got a positive!

Julia had been feeling sick all week. We didn't want to get our hopes up but she tested and we got the result we were after.

It’s very early days, so we’re still being cautious but we’re both incredibly excited.

We’ve just made our first appointment to see Dr. Moretti, so we can make sure we’re doing all the right things from the very start.

Extras:

So apart from Sam and Julia, my sims as characters don't know about Julia's pregnancy but as sims, they do! The baby was actually conceived in the restaurant, by the way. Sam and Julia jumped in the photo booth before I had a chance to stop them. Zac doesn't seem too traumatised though! He's apparently really excited about the baby!

Also, Sam was very, very lucky with the chance cards this session! He and Julia have roughly $85,000 to buy a house now. They could stay here with the baby (they have an office I could convert into a nursery) but seeing they have the money, I'm going to move them. And the apartment block seems to be going buggy anyway. That's the way it is with every apartment block I've ever played, after a while. :\

Notes:

Title is from I Took Your Name by R.E.M.

In real life, I think campaign managers sometimes travel around working on campaigns for different politicians. But I see this Political Strategist career as a local politics thing, so my campaign managers will be spreading themselves around, in terms of their duties. :)

New town hall is by Starr, from the N99 Goodies last year . It's in a bit of a state right now, as I didn't install any of the CC (I never do) but I am slowly making it over. You can't really see much of the mess in the pics, due to very selective photography.

Sorry those restaurant pics are so dark! I've fixed the lighting situation there, so it'll look a lot better next time.

Six months is definitely not a long time to be trying for a baby. But you know, Julia hates not getting her way and in the context of this session, getting pregnant actually took forever! My young couples usually get pregnant on their second try, if not their first. I think the photo booth was Julia and Sam's fifth or sixth try. But, finally, we have baby! Julia is due in March 2044, one month after Rebecca. In an effort to condense my birthday updates though, their second and third trimester updates will be in the same birthday posts.

12 comments:

Oh I love that career! I have a few sims that I think might enjoy it, and your little peaks here have me excited to give it a try. I am super excited that they are having a baby! I'm curious how Zac will be as a big brother, I've got a strong inclination that he will be awesome. He's such a good, sweet boy. Julia really lucked out with him for a stepson, and I'm so glad that she treats him well. I could see Julia being very impatient to get pregnant once the decision was made, in the regard for not being patient when it comes to getting what she wants, I'd say her and my Elise are the same. When suffering from infertility, the photobooth and a car seem to be the quick fixes! I just had another car pregnancy, totally unplanned, and Mavis was conceived in a car over at Emma and Chris' house. Cars are dangerous! ;) Can't wait to see what they have!

I can see myself using this career far more than the regular Politics career now. Realistically, of a group of ~150 people, how many are going to want to run for office?

I think Zac will be a pretty good brother. He doesn't have a ton of experience with younger kids, apart from his cousin Alex, but he's a very sensible sort of kid. I think he'll be fine. :) And I have to do pretty much nothing to get him to get along with Julia. His personality is identical to Sam's and she gets along with Sam, so it follows that she'd get along with Zac too, I guess.

I thought of your Elise actually, a couple of days after I finished writing! Julia has control freak tendencies for sure and this is something she really can't control. It's just all up to nature, really. It's funny you mention cars, because I think Araminta and Henry conceived Elspeth in a car! That was quite a miraculous pregnancy, so cars really must be magic!

Aww, I'm happy for them that it finally happened. She looks so happy in those pictures!

Sims do get pregnant so easily. You pretty much have to use mods to make it any sort of challenge at all. I am disappointed that TS4 doesn't even have declining fertility rates for older adults. Or maybe that was always part of a mod, but you'd think by this late in the series, it would be standard. ... But then, we also naively assumed that toddlers would be standard. :\

Julia is thrilled now. She's wanted a baby since before they got married, possibly even since before they got together. She's a true Family sim, that one. ;)

In TS2, once your sim is 6 days from elder, she can't get pregnant any more. ACR adds onto that and gives them actual declining fertility rates as they age, which I have always thought was so, so cool. I think you might be able to give individual sims different rates but I haven't looked into that at all. That way lies madness, at least for me!

I don't think it's that cars are easier to get pregnant in, exactly. I think they just weren't coded into ACR properly (you still have to direct them, for instance - they won't woohoo in a car autonomously), so trying for a baby in a car is pretty much a guarantee, because it uses the EA odds.

So happy for Julia, and before I read Maisie's comment, I was thinking, "try in the car!" I love the poses you did and screenshots you got, of Julia's disappointment, and the one you used of her telling Sam, that is so cute and a nice change from the same one every time.

I love Starr's lot, as well as Pru's career you are using. It does make sense, and I did something similar with mine in Simdale Valley, because elections aren't constantly going on. It makes sense to me they would collaborate with lobbyists and develop those relationships they'll need at the next election.

Laura, I totally agree about them getting pregnant too easily. For S4 Command Center lets you set the odds now as low as you want, both for TFB and for Risky. But we still can't have decreasing fertility with age, which would just make sense.

Ha, the car obviously has a reputation! Sam and Julia don't have room for a car on this lot but lucky for them, the photo booth did the trick! I'm glad you liked the posed shots - I really missed doing more of those and am happy with how they turned out.

Yeah, I need something for all those political sims to do when there are no elections...though I do really need to hold another election soon. I put it off while I was rebuilding, and then again while I was adding in all my families and decorating for them. But I could do it now and it might be a bit more interesting with the political strategist career in now.

A baby! I'm happy for them, especially because Julia started to worry so much. I love that with ACR the sims don't get pregnant just like that because it's so much more realistic than without any mods.

I really like that career and hope to use it although I don't have any sims in mind for it right now.

Wow, was Samuel lucky or what with the chance cards! I always loved those when they popped up in TS2 but I find in TS3 that they don't pop up as often. I think with TS3 it's more about the opportunities and I'm just not down for those, they actually annoy me, lol!

Congrats to them both though, baby news in the sims is always exciting! Hope everything goes well for them! :)

Yeah, Sam was a lucky guy this round! You should see the house I moved them into with the cash - it's a big change from their tiny apartment! It's this one but I've redecorated it fairly extensively. The nursery will stay the same though, so you can see where Baby Whitney will sleep. Or see it again, anyway, as I noticed you commented on that tour, lol!

And yeah, the lack of chance cards in TS3 is disappointing. The rewards for the opportunities are never that great and they get really samey after a while too. :\